Songs in the Key of Big C Contest Background

The Idea

The idea for this Contest arose over time. Through long-term music career frustration, combined with financial ruin via unplanned illness, I had always wanted to release a theme album. After years of fighting both cancer and the US Sick-n-Pay “healthcare” system, I also wanted that theme to be unique, positive without Pollyanna, and help tell my story.

Enter the phrase, “Be well.”

It means a lot - I’ve seen it used at the bottom of emails, during a parting handshake, and on signs out in front of holistic and ecological healing practitioners’ places of business.

As years passed, I kept a running list of songs I’d written that helped me keep my eyes on the prize - survival, along with the intention of thriving as a healthy, productive individual person. IOW, to truly Be Well in every sense of the phrase. What a simple and great message!

So I decided to include the phrase “Be Well” in my songs - some older, where I had to add in “Be Well” vocals in after the fact - and some current, where “Be Well” became part of the main vocals in the song.

And thus, Songs in the Key of Big C, where every song contains at least one “Be Well” in the lyrics.

The title, inspired by Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life, was one of two I was considering. The other was Exile in I-Got-Mineville, which was inspired by Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville (and which might end up being a book or chapter title, watch out!). Though the whole idea of “exile” for this project truly described how I felt a lot of the time as I dealt with setbacks, wins, financial dire straights, strokes of luck and recurrences of the disease, I elected to go with Songs in the Key of Big C as it is the best descriptor for this project.

The Importance of Choice

I started putting Songs in the Key of Big C together back in 2013, but set it aside when my father passed away in early 2014, on the Ides of March, of all days.

This tragedy became an occasion to reunite with the family I’d largely become estranged from, having been judged as lazy and a failure due to my lack of career success. This was due to unplanned illnesses, including environmental illness and systemic candidiasis, which first struck in 1996, and caused me to eventually become intolerant of 30 common foods. Five years later, it was cancer in the form of melanoma, diagnosed in 2001. These health issues are connected - and ongoing.

My father’s own case of melanoma reverberated through my mind upon my hearing my own similar diagnosis, which came after a week’s wait following a biopsy, during which the doctor told me there was nothing to worry about. I ended up being very glad I’d insisted on the biopsy.

My father had fought the disease, and so well that he’d beaten the cancer for 40+ years. He just didn’t see the heart attack coming, which is what killed him nearly instantly as he walked to the train station one morning from his house in the West Mount Airy section of Philadelphia. His best friend, a fellow pilot named Richard Norton, had died from melanoma years before. As well - and just before my 2001 diagnosis - I’d returned from Australia, where I’d been invited on a music project, and where I heard numerous stories from people there whose friends or relatives had “found those things, then ended up in the ground months later.”

This was the beginning of my dealings with cancer - and with the American healthcare system, which I’ve oftentimes found to be worse than the disease itself.

Sometimes I had insurance coverage and was able to have melanomas, suspicious moles and lesions removed conventionally, i.e., surgically. On many other occasions, I had no coverage at all. This, I noticed, had little to do with my employment status, and I soon realized that no job would make the difference. As well, I learned there were many treatments for cancer, not all of them expensive, and not all of them as severe as extensive surgeries, chemo or radiation.

Financial hardship’s silver lining came in the form of people recommending treatments I’d never heard of before, whose support of me in my quest to find ways outside of the very costly conventional US medical system gave me not only real hope, but real help to manage the disease. Because there is nothing more frightening than to be told you have a potentially deadly illness and have no access to the healthcare that you need.

Now, nearly 18 years after that initial melanoma diagnosis, I’ve successfully used several of those recommendations, including the very effective and very inexpensive vitamin C IV drip, ellagitannins, sulforaphane, graviola, black salve, and dental revision in Mexico at a fraction of American pricing.

Black salve has literally become my replacement for my dermatologist. It is that good. So good, in fact, that I gave some to my father for his own problems with melanoma shortly after I’d started using it. He, like me, hadn’t treated his cancer using chemo or radiation, though he’d later have a sizable section of his face cut out and restructured surgically. He, like me, felt that those treatments were too harsh, and so upon receiving the black salve from me, he showed it to our mutual dermatologist in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, who apparently knew all about it, but didn’t want to discuss it. Why did our dermatologist not see the value in offering his patients real choices?

In Any Doctor’s Office, I Expect to Hear ALL My Options - Not Just the Most Expensive

As a champion of bodily autonomy and the freedom to choose, this caused me to wonder, why are cancer fighters like myself so often steered toward expensive drugs and surgeries instead of being able to choose to be well according to our body types and personal healing preferences, with sound, well-qualified guidance, from all effective options available?

I’d fortunately caught most of my melanomas early, where much cheaper, natural and inexpensive treatments could be used under the guidance of a well-qualified provider, whose practice could be, in my vision of all-inclusive healthcare, on a whole-person continuum from the doing the simplest things first, like dietary changes and supplementation, through black salve and vitamin C IV treatment, etc., and on up to surgery, chemo and radiation if I’d been diagnosed at late stage and had coverage - and had chosen to pursue those routes.

Due to my spotty insurance coverage history, along with the restrictive nature of the mainstream pharma-controlled conventional medical system and its suppression of effective alternative treatments, not all options were available to me. Nor was I even informed about them - and lack of information when dealing with serious illness can be deadly.

Healthcare, Like Just About Everything Else, is Political

Given that poor political decisions regarding the availability and pricing of healthcare in the US have profoundly affected me, my health, my career and my financial outlook my entire adult life, I’ll venture into the political arena just a bit here.

I view the mainstream cancer industry in the same way I view the draft/military service or anti-abortion: body profiteering agendas with little to no freedom of choice afforded the body owner.

If one has been marketed to and sold on the notions of patriotism (the draft/military service), life (anti-abortion) or health (cancer industry), then one has really been conditioned for what lies underneath those notions: corporate profiteering. Oligarchs and others use many emotionally ginned-up issues from their playbook to pocket our money:

Having been bombarded with these messages all my life, I realize what they are: transfers of wealth, all, with politicians providing and profiting from the same framework. I, for one, am tired of being told what to do with my body so that others may profit.

Any expenditure of money in the healthcare direction should bring about a productive and positive result. But, as I’ve found, many of those profiting from my condition(s) have had little effect on my actual well being. Coming from a conservative family where saving was valued and the message most often reinforced was I don’t owe anyone anything - and that would include military service, a kid, or silly money just because I got the cancer - I’ve given myself a bit of a reprieve from being the one to blame for getting sick. Because that giant sucking sound, often attributed to those who don’t or can’t work to their fullest, wasn’t really coming from me. Learning that lesson made me the progressive I am today, or, as Dad would say when election times came around: “So. Did you cancel out my vote again?”

Yes, of course I did. That is, up until I discovered that Dad, just before he passed away, had experienced a massive change of heart and voted for Obama in 2012.

As for going broke on cancer in the “richest nation” while working and paying taxes, that is Just Plain Fucked - which might explain why a song of the same name landed on the Songs in the Key of Big C project.

Healthcare as Taxpayer Return on Investment

Universal healthcare in the US is what I’d love to see as taxpayer return on investment, or ROI. Investing into something with my tax dollars means I get something in return - something truly useful to citizens, such as an all-inclusive version of Medicare for All, one which is negotiated and reasonably priced where there’s no need for “financing” or payment plans to access sound medical care.

My thought process regarding this:

Connecting the dots means taxpayer money bankrolls the good health of the citizenry - without corruption by religious or other moneyed agendas. In turn, this creates tax revenues as well as increased productivity, security and wealth for the family, locality, state and nation.

The wellsprings of ingenuity and resilience are so often depleted by healthcare nightmares such as mine, and I’ve often wondered how much further I’d be if I’d had all-inclusive healthcare of my choice - as well as clean air, water, and dental care that had not placed mercury into my teeth. Would I already have a great career to speak of? What sort of innovations could I have brought into the world? Would I own a home?

How many cures for disease or environment-saving inventions have been missed out on because those who might have achieved those things were bogged down to mere survival and financial servitude by our healthcare system, for fuck’s sake?

I consider the current American healthcare system to be at the Weimar Republic stage, with its costly and now very corrupted attempt at twisting the insurance business model (low frequency/high severity) into something it isn’t. If the entire (socialist) US military can be covered by tax dollar investment - including equipment, food, transportation, police actions and undeclared wars as well as hundreds of bases around the globe - then the US can have full coverage, all-inclusive healthcare to protect and sustain those in the homeland. All-inclusive Medicare for All can save our sanity as well as our personal, state and national economies - which ideally are a healthy mix of public and private sector endeavors that check, balance and support each other as well as a clean environment. Astute individuals, corporations and governments choose what they need from an array of effective options, then negotiate prices with respect to their bottom lines, shareholders and taxpaying constituencies - and so can the US in promoting the general welfare.

All-inclusive Medicare for All or universal healthcare is not the “radical move to the left” as marketed to us by those with conflicts of interest, but rather a move toward common sense and the wise use of our taxpayer investment dollars. It also polls pretty damn well. In addition, I’d like to see all medical providers start posting their prices for services, treatments and procedures online. If every dental and medical office did this, we’d start to see actual competitive pricing instead of pricing padded by the ability to bill insurance companies outrageous fees behind closed doors.

I say this as one harmed irreparably by too few choices, too many excuses, too many outrageously high medical and dental bills, and too many medical, industrial and environmental toxins in an era where my body parts are constantly up for profiteering as well as a vote, which is what inspired the body-parts-on-display artwork for the Songs in the Key of Big C project.

Be Well…

I want people to Be Well…and prosper. With good health comes all good things, and the collective health of any nation’s citizens is its greatest treasure, its greatest source of productivity…and thus its prosperity. Electing those who will earmark our tax dollar investments toward this end is our duty to ourselves.

I started out in a very promising engineering career at Penn Engineering that turned quickly to dust once the unrelenting grip of the healthcare nightmare took hold, and I’ve experienced firsthand how disease - and its treatment - can lead directly to poverty. I went into the music business as a result, hoping to get a record deal, get rich, and finally be free of worry about how I was going to get the healthcare I needed. In other words, a totally third-world, elitist mentality - all due to the stupidity of our so-called “healthcare” system, which in large part was what made me so sick - and broke - in the first place.

I’ll never forget the slide from almost making it to the upper middle-class lifestyle several years after university to losing nearly everything due to illness, which took a little over a year after a doctor’s twenty-second diagnosis and careless prescription sent me to Doylestown Hospital’s emergency room and destroyed my immune system. And not long thereafter, my awesome engineering job, my finances, and with them, many of my relationships, hopes and dreams.

I’ll never let go of the notion that there should be a level playing field providing excellent healthcare for every citizen of this country. The American Dream begins with good health.

The Songs in the Key of Big C project contains songs that help me heal and deal with all that cancer brings with it: Fear. Anger. Disgust. Poverty. Hope. Determination. Research. Discernment. Treatment. Exercise. Rest. Dietary changes. Positive outlook. Action. Activism.

My greatest wish is this: Freedom, in the form of all-inclusive, universal healthcare with all options available as taxpayer return on investment. Freedom for medical students so they’re not bogged down with hundreds of thousands in educational debt. Freedom for doctors and holistic healthcare professionals to help their patients heal using any modality they wish. The freedom to be treated as a whole human being, not just an open, bleeding wallet. The freedom as a patient to Be Well, with the help of doctors as guides, not gods, in regaining the great health from which dreams can come to fruition, including my own dreams of being a hit songwriter/producer, entrepreneur and successful person all around.

…and Practice Active Listening!

Active listening is what I’m asking people to do in these SitKoBC Contest(s), which are akin to those contests where you see a bunch of candy in a jar and have to actively assess and count or estimate the number of candies in it to enter and win. In each case, you listen to a track or tracks from the SitKoBC project and count up the number of “Be Wells” you hear in the soundfile(s).

The Songs in the Key of Big C Fate’s Listening Contest ended as of February 14th, 2019. That first Contest, started during the 2018 Holiday Season and crossing over to Valentine’s Day 2019, had a prize of $500 and did not yield a Winner. Other Contests are in the works, so please check back for announcements, which will be on my homepage.

These Contests are a “thanks” to those who listen…and listen well. I remember all the times when some real cash would have made all the difference after the loss of my great engineering job at Penn Engineering. One day, when I’d been bedridden for months, overwhelmed with skin and other infections after antibiotics destroyed my immune system, I promised myself that if I ever got well and was able to establish some savings, I’d send some of it out into the world in hopes of helping people through whatever nightmares they might be dealing with, or help them get closer to a goal they’ve been going for. I can think of no better vehicle than song to make this happen… and I’d like to see those who actually listen rewarded instead of celebricharity all the time.

The prize for the first contest came from money I’ve set aside from a court settlement following a very bitter lawsuit against my father’s estate from a cousin I hardly even know, and has now been rolled over for the next Contest, when it is announced. I come from a family that fights over money, where one-upmanship, along with I Got Mine (and Fuck You), has often been the sport of choice. For me, this was a much-needed monetary break - not easy street money, but some welcome peace of mind - and fight I will.

Sharing some of this means a lot, because, like me, there are lots of people who simply need a break without the bullshit - without the finger-pointing, without the moralizing - the same kinds of breaks that I’ve been fortunate enough to receive from time to time while working toward ever better ones, always with the hope that I have a fair shot. These breaks are things that make good health possible - and good health means I’m still alive and still in the game - and therefore still able to make good on my dreams.

I think of this Contest as a fun way to promote an album through active listening, where a listener is not just listening to something, but for something - that something being my wish for all people to Be Well (and if you get sick, a high-quality, all-inclusive safety net in return for your tax dollar investment to help you get back into your life).

I’ve started with “Fate,” which you can listen to below, because once upon a time, an earlier recording of it appeared as a substitution piece for the Season Six DVD of a TV show called Dawson’s Creek, where you’ll hear it during Episode 315, called “Castaways.” I was paid US$500 for this little deal, and had high hopes that it would lead to a nice recording and/or publishing contract, because, once again and as I’d learned, it wasn’t any job that would provide me the healthcare I needed and wanted.

I haven’t gotten the major publishing deal I was building a resume toward - and I don’t think I’ve failed on my own. But that’s another story…

Stay Tuned and Be Well,
Alison